Australia

The Australians are always friendly and helpful and are famous for their laid-back attitude. They love to be in the nature as they have a couple of the world’s most beautiful landscapes like the Great Barrier Reef or the species-rich rainforest. A respectful connection to the nature is anchored in the Aborigine’s lifestyle for more than 50.000 years. The majority of the Australians are roman-catholics (22%) or protestants (13%). There are also around 30% of the Australians who are unaffiliated with any religion.

You don’t need any special vaccionations to enter Australia. A vaccination against hepatits A is recommended. If you stay longer a vaccination against hepatitis B and meningococcal meningitis may be to consider.  There also occurs the Japanese encephalitis since 2022. You could think about a vaccination against it if you’re traveling to New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria or South Australia. There is Dengue-fever, but there aren’t vaccinations against that. Be aware of dangerous animals like jellyfish, venomous spiders and snakes, crocodiles and sharks. Health care in general is good.

You need a visum to travel to Australia. There is the eVisitor Visum (Subclass 651) for European tourists. It’s valid for one year and it’s possible to enter Australia multiple times but each stay has a maximum of three months. You can apply for it online and it’s free. The processing time is maximum 2 days for 90% of the applications. For other citizens you have to apply for the Electronic Travel Authority (ETA, Subclass 601) which hast he same conditions, but costs you 20 Australian dollars. You can get the ETA as a citizen of the US, Canada, Singapore, Japan or South Korea e.g.

Australia is a safe country in general and the crime rates are low. There are pickpockets at crowded touristic places and there occasionally are car or camper break-ins.

Australia is a pretty expensive country for traveling. Flights from Europe are expensive and so is the price level in Australia. Prices for accomodations, especially in the bigger cities like Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane are very high. Groceries are expensive, too. We recommend going to Aldi, as it is the cheapest supermarket in our opinion. Sometimes you can save a fortune, if you book your rental car/camper early. We were very lucky, as we only paid around 23€/day for our camper.